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Wednesday, 28 October 2015

The question of admitting
divorcees who have entered a civil union was a hot-button topic at the Synod. According
to the Wall Street journal (here):

“The focus
now shifts to how the pope will respond, with both sides looking for him to
settle the Communion issue for good. Conservatives want him to make a clear
reaffirmation of traditional teaching. But raised expectations of liberals and the pope’s own preferencessuggest the pontiff may opt for change.

“In the end,
Pope Francis could leave the matter vague— affirming the indissolubility of
marriage, but urging priests to be merciful with people in difficult marital
situations—tacitly allowing bishops to act on their own. Today, many priests
knowingly give Communion to divorced, remarried Catholics. [emphasis added]

The reality is that, despite Francis
having apparently filled the important places in the Synod with men of his own persuasion
and choosing, the liberal agenda was not sanctioned by the Synod. Vague language
is all that was left to them. Such language is itself highly problematic, since
it plays false to the Truth by failing to proclaim it: it fudges it; it is
economical with it -and thus treacherous towards it. Make no mistake: to fudge
the issue would be as treacherous as changing the doctrine or the rules.

One thing I think the WSJ has
gotten wrong is that “the pontiff may opt
for change”. He cannot, without abandoning his responsibility as defender
of the Deposit of Faith, for the Pope is not master of the Truth but its
servant (even Cardinal Marx admitted that one). If Francis goes ahead and
fudges issues for ‘his own preferences’, he abandons his post and shows himself
to be treacherous, for he is called by The Lord to guard the Sacred Deposit
faithfully, not to compromise it; called to reform the world by the Sacred Deposit, not reform the Sacred Deposit by the
contemporary world. That said, Francis must
know that if he uses papal Authority to overrule 2,000 years of teaching and
discipline that he can be overruled by the very next Pontiff. So expect no
change from Francis unless he is supremely stupid or supremely arrogant. We
don’t want to see the man go down in history as either, or both, and one or
other is unavoidable if he ‘opts for change’ or fudges the issue so that the ambiguity can be misused to further an agenda pursued by liberals, who misuse
the term ‘development’ of doctrine to mean the changing of doctrine, rather than the organic, consistent growth of authentic development. For Traditionalists,
doctrine grows in internal consistently with its nature, as a foal grows into a
horse. For liberals a foal need not grow into a horse but can mutate into a dog,
so as long as it has four legs and a tail they can say it resembles the foal,
and they play on the resemblance while ignoring the internal inconsistency that
it is no longer what it was or was meant to be.

Tuesday, 27 October 2015

The Synod has come to
an end, but its impact is yet to be known. While both sides seem to be claiming
victory in these early days, the fact is that it all depends upon what Francis
does. There has been much talk about Doctrine not being changed, only practice
(which is nonsense since practice flows from doctrine: lex credendi, lex vivendi), and while chsnging practice but not
doctrine might keep liberals from falling into formal heresy it cannot keep them from being charged with treachery,
for to practice what is contrary to the Truth is to play false to the Truth,
and the Truth is Christ. My concern is the spectres of softer language,
‘accompanying’, decentralisation and conversion of the papacy are now hovering
around, and no matter what the Final
Relatio says, it is Francis who will have the last say.

I have grown weary of
the talk about ‘mercy’ and ‘accompanying’ folk in irregular situations. I need
mercy as much as the next man, if not more (for ‘from him to whom much has been
entrusted, much more will be required’, Lk.12v48), but I need true mercy which
recognises my sin, my repentance and my amendment of life; a mercy which accompanies
me in my attempt to change, not in my sin: no one wants to die in a state of
sin no matter who is accompanying them in it. The mercy Our Lord showed to the
woman caught in adultery was to tell her that her sins were forgiven and that she was to go and sin no
more. His Church must do the same since she is to speak for Him (Lk.10v16), not
for secular society (or for ‘today’s different circumstances’). Only when we
walk away from sin can we be forgiven for it: we cannot clean and dry the child
who refuses to come out of the dirty water of the local pond; the towel itself
becomes wet, dirty and useless -and we end up the same by ‘accompanying them’
in the dirty water.

As to ‘penitential
paths’ and the inviolability of conscience as a means of admitting the
remarried divorcee to Holy Communion –how can it be applied? An internal forum ‘solution’
could be used to allow everyone to return to the Communion, and then the
teaching on indissolubility means nothing and the treachery is clear for all to
see.

The call for ‘new
language’ is also problematic. It can only be a watering down of The Faith
since it is not easy (if at all possible) to render ‘intrinsically evil’ (as in
contraception) ‘adultery’ (civil marriage after divorce/cohabitation) or
‘intrinsically disordered’ (homosexual acts) in any other way that equates with
the terms ‘adultery’ and ‘intrinsically disordered’: even ‘irregular’ does not
carry the same connotation of sin. Unclear language distorts the Truth into a
deception; a lie whose father is the devil (Jn.8v44).

The idea of a ‘conversion
of the papacy’ is also questionable. What on earth does it mean? A dissolution
of the papacy to a lesser or greater extent is the only thing it can mean. As
for ‘devolution of authority’, such devolution would cause difficulties that
cannot be surmounted. For example, there is a divide between the Bishops of Poland
and Germany on the readmitting of the remarried divorcee to Holy Communion, and
even between individual Bishops within single nations, such as Burke and Cupich
in the USA. The nonsense of devolution would be that for those living near a Country
or Diocesan border one may be out of communion with the Church in one location
and in Communion with her 15 minutes down the road –presumably grave sin disappears
and reappears across borders like some mysterious mist. One could be in a state
of sin at one end of the road and in a state of grace at the other. All in all,
the problems may not be in the Synod, but in the spectres of ‘softer language’,
in ‘accompanying’, and in the ideas of ‘decentralisation’ and ‘conversion of the
papacy’.

Note: I must admit I
am wearied by Francis caricatures of Traditionalists. In his final speech he
described those who hold to the Gospel as ‘those
who would “indoctrinate” it in dead stones to be hurled at others’, saying [the
synod] was about ‘laying bare the closed
hearts which frequently hide even behind the Church’s teachings or good
intentions, in order to sit in the chair of Moses and judge, sometimes with
superiority and superficiality, difficult cases and wounded families..’ Not
only can Francis be seen as saying that the Lord did not give us a doctrine,
but that the Synod was about correcting those he considers have closed, stone
hearts. He is also demonstrating that he labours under the uninformed,
prejudiced caricature of Traditionalists present among many of the seminary
professors in the 1980’s. I do not recognise any Traditional priest I know in such
caricatures; those I know do not meet
wounded families with a closed heart or a position of superiority from the
chair of Moses (who Francis thus appears to equate with hard-heartedness);
rather, the Traditional priests I know meet wounded families with clear
teaching but gentle manner and kind words. Pope or not, Francis is espousing a
judgemental attitude toward faithful, Traditional members of the Lord’s flock,
and I am wearied by what feels to me like a continuing lecture on how bad Traditionalists are.

Tuesday, 20 October 2015

Following the Pope’s statementabout
his intention todecentralise authority from Rome to the Episcopal Conferences,
many faithful Catholics see a dangerous weakening of the entire Church.

When I trained in counselling
the tutors would ask us to assess one another in role play (and later in real
sharing between ourselves) so that we could tell the ‘counsellor’ where they
were good or bad in their use of skills and theory. Taking the non-judgemental
ideology seriously I would describe the ‘counsellors’ interventions as ‘helpful’
or ‘unhelpful’ rather than ‘good’ and ‘bad’. I apply this to my comments on
Pope Francis too, since we cannot read his soul and cannot know his motivation;
we can only judge his actions as good/helpful or otherwise -and one has to say
they are ‘otherwise’. In fact the idea of devolved authority is downright
damaging to the unity of the Church and to the integrity of Doctrine, and as
such can be pleasing only to the devil, Freemasons, Communists and catholics
who have lost their faith in Divine Revelation and the Church and wish to see the Church become a house divided, which cannot stand (Mk.3v25).

The way Our Lord determined to
preserve the unity of the Church was through the Petrine Ministry; the Rock (Matt.16v18)
who was to confirm the brethren in the Faith (Lk.22v32) as their supreme
shepherd (Jn.15v15-17), so when Francis speaks of decentralising authority he cannot
complain if he is described as doing the enemy’s work. Devolution to national
Churches is not however, a new thing; it began many decades ago and we were
softened up for it by the abandoning of Latin as the universal language in
favour of diverse national languages. Truly, IMHO, the loss of Latin was the
writing on the door to disunity. Today, Francis is trying to open that door.
Let us pray that the Holy Ghost, working through orthodox Bishops, priests and
laity will enlighten him and remind him that he does not own the house of God;
that he is merely its caretaker, and that his responsibility is to defend the holy
edifice, not hand it over to the enemy.

Make no mistake about it,
devolution will destroy the Church. Not only will Truth be abandoned in favour
of ‘local circumstances’ (localised relativism of areas or groups of persons
such as adulterers, active homosexuals and paedophiles) but even practical day
to day unity will be broken as English, American, Australian and the rest of
the Anglophone world determine their own translation (paraphrases) of the Roman
liturgy -if they agree to use it at all.

Truly, the idea of devolving
authority to Episcopal Conferences is pure Protestantism, even when the idea
comes from Rome herself.

Thursday, 15 October 2015

I am aware through that
intrepidly faithful Catholic Mundabor that there is a
petition to ask the sound Catholic Bishops to walk out of the Synod. I have not
yet signed it -for three reasons- though I am still considering it.

My first reason is that if the
good Bishops walk out, who will defend the Faith? Contrary to the assertion of Pope Francis, the presence of the successor of Peter
does not guarantee orthodoxy; his presence can do this only if he himself remains
faithful to the Deposit of Faith; if the faithful Bishops walk out of the Synod
it will simply go its own merry way, demolishing pastoral practice so as to
accommodate moral relativism and thereby deceive souls in sinful situations into
think they are at rights with God. This would be a grave error, and would be an
indication that Archbishop Tomash Peta is correct in saying thesmoke of Satan is entering the aula of Paul VI, for Satan is the
father not of truth, but of deception. On the other hand, a walk-out would show
history that the Synod was not acceptable to all and will leave the Synod, its
documents and the Pope more easily repudiated in the future.

Second, the petition makes
a criticism that while there is talk about collegiality this is not being
demonstrated at the Synod. Well, I for one do not want to see the kind of
collegiality that is being talked about during this papacy; it is one of
devolution of authority to Episcopal Conferences to decide on pastoral regulations
and (and unavoidably doctrine too, via the rationale behind those changes). This
kind of collegiality is High Church Anglicanism; a federation of local churches
whose practices and doctrines differ. It demolishes the Catholic Church as
erected by Christ to establish a preferred church of man’s own making; one
without authority but full of contradictions; a church more acceptable to
freemasons than Catholics. Here, as Archbishop Lefebvre foresaw, ‘the French
revolution in the Church’: liberty, equality, fraternity.

Today’s concept of collegiality
is one which seeks to follow local culture rather than the Gospel; the Synod is
an attempt to abandon the teaching of Jesus Christ in favour of the teachings
of the secular world. It might sound good to an Episcopal Conference to have
such authority, but do the bishops realise it diminishes the authority of the
individual Bishop in his own Diocese, who then becomes a pawn of the Conference?
And he will not be able to hide behind the Episcopal Conference when he gives
account of himself and his ministry to Our Lord.

A third reason is that I am not sure we should be call on our Bishops to walk out on a pope and a synod. Perhaps we should be petitioning them not to 'walk out' but to 'fight it out' .

Tuesday, 13 October 2015

So, was there one letter or two
letters outlining concerns to Pope Francis and where there nine, ten or more
signatories (see Rorate Caeli here)? In one sense it does not matter:
what has been revealed is a Synod and Church in chaos; a chaos that brings into
focus a hidden schism (if we may call it that) in the Church, and with which we have been living since the
close of the Second Vatican Council.

What schism? Not “the SSPX –v-
Rome”, for the SSPX are in strict continuity with all that went before and
simply have sections of the Vatican II documents that they refuse, such as erroneous views of Ecumenism and Collegiality. It is a schism/division of
those in formal union with Rome; a division between those who uphold the Sacred
Tradition and those who seek to abandon it in the name of mercy. Liberals
remain part of the official Church (and rise within its ranks to at least the
level of Bishop and Cardinal, it seems), though they too refuse parts of
Vatican II, especially in regard to the liturgy of the Church. The schism/division has been an
occult one until now, in which the Church of today is being divided from the Church of the past.
It is a schism/division lead by those who refuse the hermeneutic of
continuity in order to lead the Church away from her Sacred Tradition and the disciplines which
protect it so as to accommodate the sexual mores of today’s society. Sadly, these same folk seem to stray from charity and label those faithful to the Church’s Tradition ‘Pharisees’ and ‘rigid
doctors of the law’.

That any letter was signed by
anyone to bring to the attention of the Pope misgivings about the Instrumentum Laboris or the practical procedures
of the current Synod is both a mark against this Synod and a stain on the Pope,
under whose watch this hitherto occult schism/division has matured into open division by
taking the Pope’s call for mercy to extreme, unorthodox lengths: one which requires no amendment of life (which is something we all need to do, every day of our lives, since we are all on a journey to perfection). I'm sure it is with genuine regard for people and the pain they experience when they cannot receive Holy Communion, but we have to be careful that we don't allow emotion to get in the way of Reasoned Faith.

Pope Benedict XVI
may have seen the wolves at the door and been unable to bolt it, but Francis
has refused to even try bolting the door and instead, welcomed the wolves into
the living room where he has found he cannot control them as they steal the
food (Truth, cf. Matt.4v4) from the children and thereby threaten the lives of the children themselves.
Faithful shepherds have written something (we know not what, really) and turned
on a light by which the wolves can be seen and tackled. God bless and strengthen those faithful shepherds; God bless and enlighten those who would leave Tradition behind, and God bless and direct Pope Francis who, when the Synod is over, will have to sort out this mess in ways that please The Way, The truth and The Life.

Friday, 9 October 2015

No wonder the SSPX is not favoured by many in today's episcopate: it takes prayer, penance and devotion to God; seriously; it honours God and our Lady and invites the laity to active demonstration of the faith. Just watch this video and see genuine Catholicism in action. Thank you, SSPX.

One of the major ploys of Satan is to take
a truth and distort it. In Eden he took the truth that we are made in God’s
image and likeness and twisted it to have Adam and Eve seek likeliness to God
in the espousing of absolute autonomy: “You can be like God and know right from
wrong”. In presenting autonomy to Adam as likeness to God, Satan had Adam
follow a lie into suffering and death. Today, Satan is taking the truth that
God is merciful to have us accept not simply the sinner but the sin.

Let us be brutally honest: from reports
coming from the Synod, many at the highest levels of the Church seem to have been
deceived by Satan; they are advocating ‘new directions’ outside of Gospel truth.
Having taken on board modern, person-centred psychology in which “what is right
for me is right” reigns, they are ditching Gospel Truth as ‘rigid’ and ‘lacking
in mercy’, yet the mercy they talk of is one which means not judging the act or situation –which is a false mercy, for true mercy judges the act in
order to save the person.

Sadly, Francis is not calling them back
but seems to be encouraging their new direction, hinting that their idea of
mercy is the work of a ‘God of surprises’. In reality, they are not asking us
to be surprised by God; they are asking us to ignore God and His Divine Law. Francis
has likened those who defend The Faith to those who wished to stone the woman
caught in adultery; he implies they have no understanding of God’s mercy and
are like the rigid doctors of the law. But
they do understand mercy; they have read that Gospel passage to the end where
Our Lord warns to woman, ‘go, and sin no more’. If this Synod continues to focus on only half
of the Gospel; on mercy without repentance and amendment of life (which we all
have to engage in) it preaches a distortion of the Gospel and does the work of
Satan. Those who promote this false mercy are steering toward the wide road
that leads to perdition, and taking souls with them. To be sure,
Francis can be read as upholding the Faith, but he does appear to engage in
double-speak as a matter of course, for while he affirmed doctrine in his
homily at the opening Mass of the Synod, he still asked the Synod Fathers to be
surprised by God and allow the Holy Spirit to lead us into new ways of living
out the Faith (labelled as mere ‘disciplinary changes’). The man-in-the-street,
however, can see the idiocy and danger of saying we believe one thing yet doing
another: “I believe in gravity, but I wish to fly and believe I can fly, so
jumping of the Dome of St Peter’s will not harm me”.

Here is a surprise
for those advocating a new style of mercy: nothing is impossible to God. A
‘No-thing’, a contradiction, is impossible to God. God cannot draw a square
circle, and He cannot unite Himself to sin either. What we need from this Synod
is not ways of admitting those in objectively sinful situations to the Holy of
Holies, but ways to help marriages and the family stay a stable and strong
light in this God-forsaking world. As this Synod progresses we faithful
Catholics are called to act as in the days of the Arian Crisis and raise our
voices in favour of orthodoxy. As Edmund Burke said, ‘all that is required for
evil to flourish is that good men do nothing’. Let us be faithful instruments
of the Holy Spirit, who protects the Deposit of Faith given by Christ. Let us raise
our voices in defence of The Truth so that Satan does not hoodwink the prelates
of the Church and lead them -and us- astray.

Saturday, 3 October 2015

I have always encouraged people
to pray a daily Rosary by noting that its power is that of the word of God: its
prayers comes from the Sacred Scriptures so it is a verbal recitation of the word
of God contained in the Bible, and it is a mediation on the life and work of
the Divine Redeemer (the Word made Flesh) in bringing about the Atonement. What
better power is there to draw upon in the universe than the very word of God
Himself? None. Janet Moore, author of the blog ‘Entering into the Mystery’, has
written a striking piece on the power of the Rosary here. Do go and
read it, it recounts the power of the Rosary over the atomic bomb, the forces
of Communism, the forces of Radical Islam and the power of the Devil.

If often think of the Rosaries
I say as interlinked like a chain, by which I am building, by God’s grace, a
ladder to heaven. Why not build one yourself? If you miss a day see it as a
broken rung –and see an additional Rosary next day as a repair job. (The danger
with this is that we can give ourselves permission to miss if we are doing regular
repair jobs, and we may break so many rungs the ladder becomes weak and we stop
using it. Never give up on the Rosary. It has its own power above and beyond
the one who says it: it holds the power of God to thwart evil and save souls.
It is the weapon, as St. Padre Pio would say! Here is the link to Janet again: ThePower of the Rosary. Do go and read her excellent post.

Friday, 2 October 2015

Strange header for this post,
no? Not as strange as the reality it conveys, for high-ranking evangelical
Protestants have warned Catholics that Pope Francis is left-leaning; taking the
Church with him, and appears to have sided with the political left (seeLifesite News here). That makes for sad reading; protestant leaders
are alarmed that in Francis’ speech to the joint session of the US Congress he
never mentioned Jesus Christ (whose Vicar he is and whose name and teaching he
is meant to proclaim). What might this imply to them and to the outside world
(and to solid Catholics) about who Francis sees as the supreme teacher?

In my previous post I ventured
to say Francis is too provincial, but I may have misconstrued his problem.
Certainly he has won hearts by hisembracing of the sick etc,
but he is losing solid Catholics on a daily basis; only those with politically
left leanings are likely to be faithful to him. Further, in promoting his image
as the caring Francis yet failing to mention Jesus Christ, he has allowed
people to make the claim that he has his own agenda at the centre of his vision, rather than the Gospel.

As if this were not problem
enough for Francis, he has also left himself open to a charge of ‘speaking with
a forked tongue’, for while he addressed victims of child sexual abuse and told
them that clergy and bishops will be held accountable, he
has personally invited Cardinal Danneels to the Synod on the family, yet
Danneels has a history of telling an abuse victim to stay quiet
about the abusing Bishop until the said Bishop had retired.

Few devout Catholics will be
uplifted by Francis on his US trip; those who are happy with him are likely
those who have no desire to uphold the Traditional Faith of the Church on
marriage and the family, since these are the very issues Francis strikingly failed
to defend before Congress. That this failure (as well as the failure to speak
of Christ and the failure to denounce the evil of abortion) has concerned even
non-Catholics, is disturbing.

In a country where the Church
is being battered by secular forces which demand funding by Church groups for
the anti-life Culture of Death (contraception and abortion); the same country
which has legislated for homosexual pairings to be equivalent to God-given
marriage, Francis ought to have spoken clearly and unequivocally of the
teaching on the Church on these issues. Talk about the environment and social
justice is all well and good, but failure to mention the right to life (upon
which access to very other right depends); the failure to defend of the natural
process of transmitting life, and even the failure to mention Jesus Christ, is a
loss beyond words. Many are likely to view Francis as politically (or image)
motivated rather than gospel motivated.

It has also been revealed (see Rorate Caeli here) that a shadow group of Jesuits are already
drafting the post-synodal document by Pope Francis, apparently with his
knowledge. If true this is a massive indictment against the current Roman
Authorities, and explains why the reflections of the “small groups” (circuli minores) are not going to be shared,
and why there will be no mid-term report: they will likely not be of the kind
the shadow (shady?) people want.

UPDATE: So, the Vatican is claiming Kim Davis had no 'real audience' with the pope and that it should not be taken as support...well, coming so soon after a rebuke of the Pope by the Left, this looks very much like the Pope even regrets supporting solid Christian teaching and witness. Dear oh dear, what have we here? Will Fr Lombardi now have to say it was an audience and the pope does support Ms. Davis' position or what? The answer is 'what': what a mess we are in.